I was wondering if someone could answer this question for me.
How many mb does msn messenger or any other instant messenger program take up per use? or average usage? How much does Google maps take up with the occasional look up? I am contemplating a data plan......I am a student and cannot afford the unlimited data plan through rogers in Canada...and I probably would only be using it to check my email from school, and messaging. I dount I'd surf the web much because there are computer labs all over campus that I could go to for that. I don't want to cart my heavy laptop to school (an hour bus ride each way) just for instant messaging capabilities.

There is no unlimited data plan with Rogers. The best they offer is $60 for 25MB of data (unless they have a specific offer for residents of Manitoba). Overage is charged at $7 per MB. I wouldn't recommend using a smaller data plan.

IM data use would obviously depend on the length of messages you send and receive. You could likely count each message as a few KB's of data. With Google Maps, each map is likely 40-60kb's of data....

Ok...an update. After talking to a couple of Rogers rep and getting bounced around, I have decided not to purchase a data plan. I ended up buying an unlocked motorolla a630 instead, to get the data capabilities that I needed that I can access with my prepaid sim card. I will still use my Blackberry for organization capabilities...because in all honesty, it rocks for that. The games are awesome too. Plus I can rotate my sim card between the two.